As one of the newest social media websites, Pinterest has already climbed to the #3 spot in social media for most visitors right behind Facebook and Twitter. How about that for growth?
No matter what type of business you’re in, you probably have a few tips or words of inspiration that you can share with your target audience. Whatever your business, you too can create and display super-repinnable graphics that represent your business well.
For example, if you’re a business coach who focuses on time management and one of your best tips is to only check email twice a day. How in the world do you create a pin for that?
Step 1: Because Pinterest is image based, the first step is to find a photo or background for the pin. While you can use any pattern or color you’d like, straight color may not be as eye-catching as you’d want. Try to find something that’s both on-brand and relevant.
You’ve GOT to find a photo you know you have permission to use, like a royalty-free one that you’ve purchased or one you’ve taken yourself. DO NOT just search Google images and find something you like. That could land you in some serious hot water with the photographer, the license company, or both. Many photos on Google images are rights-managed, which means the photographer only allows people to buy them for very specific purposes – and stealing them is a HUGE NO-NO and also terrible karma. Because this is business we’re talking about, you don’t want negative juju when it comes to your biz, so no stealing!
My favorite site to purchase photos from is istockphoto.com. On istockphoto.com, you can do a search. For our example, let’s search “time” or “email help”. Another option would be to just search on pretty backgrounds – if you want to make a visual impact with just the words, maybe a background is the best way to go.
Step 2: Once you have your image, it’s time to use picmonkey.com, a free image editing tool.
With picmonkey.com, you’ll upload the image you purchased or took yourself, and there will be some choices there to enhance the photo. Go ahead and play around with this if you want. It’s pretty neat all the things you can do with it. But the focus here is on the text. Click the “P” button and add your text.
Step 3: Once you’re happy with the way it looks, you can save the photo and it’s time to upload it to Pinterest. On the top right corner of your Pinterest page, there’s an “Add” button and a little plus sign. Click it, and upload your pin.
Remember to add your description. You do need to go back in and edit the pin in order to add your URL – the place where you want to link the pin. Otherwise it’s just a pretty picture – but doesn’t bring you much traffic. The idea is that when people click the pin, it goes to your website to bring you more traffic.
Some Make-Your-Own ideas:
- Say you have a blog post on “Top 10 Time Management Strategies.” Make each one a pin and pin them to a “time management” board. Then, have them all lead back to the blog post.
- Make a pin for quotes you find – sales quotes, healthy living quotes, business quotes, inspirational quotes, even funny quotes would be good for pinning and repining.
- Create client boards with logos or featured people, and then lead the pins either back to case studies or to the client websites (with their permission.) I’m sure they’d love the extra traffic! Use the editing tools to standardize how all the pins look.
- Pin logos of conferences you’re attending or where you’ve been featured across the web. Standardize these, too.
Graphic tips:
- Don’t choose a font that’s hard to read.
- Stay away from very busy patterns unless you can make sure that the tips or quotes you write on top will be readable.
- When using photos, pick a spot that is blank. Try not to put any text over the busy part of a photo.
- Don’t use more than 2 fonts.
- Don’t forget to include your website or logo as a watermark – it’s all about the advertising, baby!
Jessica, you badass, you’ve done it again! A great post and this old dog learned a few new tricks! I have been desperate for a free image editing tool. Thanks so much for putting me onto PicMonkey and the tip about adding your url or watermark. That one may sound like a “duh” but it really has never occurred to me!
Thanks for your brilliance! Keep the great 411 coming!
Thanks, Rachel!
Great post, Jessica! I’ve been using PinAQuote to create quote pins. Super easy to use: highlight text from a page (or type it in) and go. I upgraded to Pro for $1.99 so I could customize the way the quotes look.
I didn’t know that the pro option was available yet! I didn’t recommend it because when I saw it, there was no control over the graphics. Great note, thank you so much, Denise!!
Jess — as always great info. I haven’t thought about ways to use Pinterest with “non-visual” stuff. This post got me thinking!!
thanks so much for these tips! very timely as I tried making my own just last night using Photoshop elements but PicMonkey looks waaaay easier. totally going to try it. this was my effort from last night….http://pinterest.com/pin/277745501989417390/
Hey Kristi – that’s actually not bad, just the font could be a bit larger due to the wispy-ness of the grass. Well done, though!
Very helpful and practical tips, Jessica. I’m delighted to know about PicMonkey!
I especially appreciated your clarity about the ethics involved in pinning other people’s photos without proper credit.
Jessica, these tips are fantastic! Can’t wait to start implementing them on Pinterest. I’ve definitely noticed that when you pin great images, people really do start following and engaging with your brand. It takes time but it works.
I always thought making my own graphics would be too hard and I would always simply have to re-pin other people’s graphics that I like… this tutorial has really made it nice and easy to understand… guess what I’ll be doing this evening!@!
Thanks Jess, I totally hadn’t realised you could add your link to the images, now I get it!
Very cool… I do good morning motivational quotes. Great way to make them images.
Great post Jessica.
I have got 1 suggestion for your webpage. It looks like right now there are a handful of cascading stylesheet troubles while launching a number of web pages in google chrome and firefox. It is running okay in internet explorer. Perhaps you can double check that.
Just to let you know your web page looks a little bit different in Firefox on my computer with Linux .
Can you message me with some hints & tips on how you made your site look this cool , I would appreciate it!
I have got one idea for your webpage. It seems like right now there are a few cascading stylesheet problems when opening a number of webpages within google chrome as well as opera. It is working fine in internet explorer. Probably you can double check this.
Just discovered this site through Bing, what a pleasant surprise!